Why is it that city motorists and other Kenyans have to be inconvenienced wherever a major sporting event is taking place?
This is exactly what happened yesterday for thousands of motorists and other road users around Nyayo National Stadium.
We agree that this has been a great weekend for rugby and football lovers. At the Nyayo National Stadium, the 2012 Safaricom Safari Rugby Sevens has been taking place since Friday. The crowd-puller event ends today.
Moi International Sports Complex in Kasarani hosted the premier league football match between perennial rivals AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia football clubs.
But it was at Nyayo where the management of traffic was a mess, to say the least. Motorists using Uhuru Highway, Mbagathi Way, and Lang’ata, Aerodromes, and Mombasa roads had to spend hours on the road simply because traffic police failed to ensure smooth flow of traffic.
Preparation for the annual rugby tournament has been going on for months and it beats reason why traffic police appeared confused and unprepared to handle traffic around the roads near the venue.
Motorists complained they had to spend hours on the road and many said they had missed crucial appointments.
Senior traffic police officers at the venue were not helpful either. They knew there was a problem, but failed to ease the problem.
This is not the first time such events have disrupted smooth flow of traffic in the city, leading to disruption of other unrelated activities.
While we welcome such events, the traffic police must not sleep on the job. They need to employ better ways to manage traffic and, above all, warn motorists and other road users that sections of the road leading to the venue would be closed, in good time for them to plan.
